Heh. That's like the uber-epic-awesome version of something I did a few years back. :)
I got one of those typical "WE R TOTLY UR BANK AN WE NED 2 INTESTICATE U 4 FRUAD SO LOGIN HEER" emails. As a web dev, I looked at it and went "Wow, this is crap. I bet this is some script kiddie who didn't even write it, just bought it off a 'Scamming People For Dummies' website and installed it. Let's see if I can mess with him."
So I checked out the code of the site it sent me to, and holy CRAP, neither the site nor the redirect were PHP/ASP/etc., but pure old-school CGI scripting (and I was born in that thar briar patch).
"AWESOME!" I say. "Although if he has half a braincell in his head, he locked the CGI directory down from web indexing... oh look, he doesn't." At that point, the extent of my plans was to find the personal email address this guy was having the info routed to, and send it to the feds and a message to him telling him to do several anatomically improbable things. But then I noticed there was a .txt file in the directory.
Then, right at the end, I got an email from one woman who hadn't responded at all at first and I thought just ignored me. She said that she did ignore me at first, then called her bank, explained the situation and as soon as she mentioned the email they checked her accounts. The guy had just started charging her credit card but had racked up less than $200 so far before they froze it. She sent me a huge, gushing email of thanks that totally bowled me over.
To be honest, I'd been expecting to be nothing but ignored or suspected, and I was okay with that, telling myself that as long as some of the people checked it out and cut the scammer off before he ripped them a new one, I was happy. But that one email made me feel like a superhero. I'm pretty sure I'm going to treasure that memory until the day I die.
Not even REMOTELY comparable to the level of this guy saving these girls. But still, just a reminder that sometimes... the internet is made of Awesome and Win.
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I got one of those typical "WE R TOTLY UR BANK AN WE NED 2 INTESTICATE U 4 FRUAD SO LOGIN HEER" emails. As a web dev, I looked at it and went "Wow, this is crap. I bet this is some script kiddie who didn't even write it, just bought it off a 'Scamming People For Dummies' website and installed it. Let's see if I can mess with him."
So I checked out the code of the site it sent me to, and holy CRAP, neither the site nor the redirect were PHP/ASP/etc., but pure old-school CGI scripting (and I was born in that thar briar patch).
"AWESOME!" I say. "Although if he has half a braincell in his head, he locked the CGI directory down from web indexing... oh look, he doesn't." At that point, the extent of my plans was to find the personal email address this guy was having the info routed to, and send it to the feds and a message to him telling him to do several anatomically improbable things. But then I noticed there was a .txt file in the directory.
( ... )
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To be honest, I'd been expecting to be nothing but ignored or suspected, and I was okay with that, telling myself that as long as some of the people checked it out and cut the scammer off before he ripped them a new one, I was happy. But that one email made me feel like a superhero. I'm pretty sure I'm going to treasure that memory until the day I die.
Not even REMOTELY comparable to the level of this guy saving these girls. But still, just a reminder that sometimes... the internet is made of Awesome and Win.
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